As the technological capacity for organizations to create, track, and retain information continues to grow, a variety of different technologies for managing and storing the rising tide of information have been developed. Secure and reliable long-term data storage is one such technology that satisfies the need to archive collected information that may be used infrequently. Typically, information archives are stored on physical mediums, such as magnetic tape data storage, implemented on systems that may prove complex to operate and expensive to maintain. Information archives may not be easily accessible to clients who wish to retrieve archived data. Alternatively, archived data storage may be implemented using network-based storage, such as a cloud-based storage service. However, even these network-based solutions may still not provide quick access to archived data. Thus, in order to maintain the flexibility and cost effectiveness of these network-based solutions, data transport efficiency and integrity must be continually examined and improved.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.